Derek Jeter is clutch. Mark Teixeira should win the gold glove. Carlos Lee is the worst player in the majors. All things that almost go without saying. Except they’re wrong, as Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan explains in this year’s version of his highly-enjoyable 25 Things You Didn’t Know About Baseball column. Lots of pitching metrics this…

Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Joe Torre is going to announce today that he’s stepping down. That’s not terribly surprising. What is surprising is that the team is going to announce Don Mattingly as his successor. Surprising in that, as the season has gotten uglier and uglier for the Dodgers,…

We’re coming up on three years since former Yankees catcher Jim Leyritz was in the auto accident that claimed the life of Fredia Ann Veitch, and he still has yet to go to trial. Trial was set to start next week, but that’s on hold because Leyrtiz is taking in interlocutory appeal of a key…

Doug Fernandes of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune has some advice for Joe Maddon and the Rays when they face the Yankees next week: Joe Maddon has an answer for everything, so I’m sure the Tampa Bay skipper doesn’t need any advice on how to handle the fallout from Knobgate. However . . . This one time,…

The L.A. Times’ Dylan Hernandez reports that Joe Torre has “said he has decided what he’ll do next year,” and that he has told his wife and Dodgers’ GM Ned Colletti. He’s just not telling the public what it is yet. Query: did Torre have an open invitation to come back that would allow him…

In this morning’s recaps I expressed surprise that the Mets four-game sweep of the Pirates was the first time they had swept a four-game series in four years. Reader The Dangerous Mabry tells me that I shouldn’t have been so shocked: The four game sweep thing only seems like a meaningful stat. The mighty New…

Paul Konerko got beaned in the face by Carl Pavano in the first inning of last night’s Twins-White Sox game. In the second inning, Mark Buehrle plunked Michael Cuddyer in the shoulder, no doubt because of the Konerko thing. No brawls, no ugliness, end of story and life went on. But Buehrle’s quote, when asked…

We usually hear about Yom Kippur and baseball when the holiday impacts a Jewish player during the playoffs. This year Yom Kippur does not occur during the playoffs — it begins at sundown tonight and lasts until sunset tomorrow — and Ike Davis certainly does not have any playoff plans this year. But his team…

The O’Malley family owned the Dodgers for 47 years. While there are some old coots in Brooklyn who still hate them, they’re pretty much Dodgers royalty. Since selling the team the O’Malleys haven’t been terribly outspoken about the Dodgers, serving more as sources for historians, documentary filmmakers and authors and stuff than critics of the…

Speaking of the Dodgers offseason options, Andre Ethier takes issue with the talk from yesterday about how he wants to go to the Red Sox: “It’s obviously hearsay,” said Ethier. “Especially at this point, it doesn’t even make sense to comment on something like this.” I’m no lawyer, but I always heard that admissions against…

Every time a controversial play goes down that could have been made right by instant replay, Bud Selig says they’ll study the matter, and then a few days later he says that everyone likes the status quo just fine. Not everyone. ESPN’s Jayson Stark polled 24 of the 30 major league managers and found that…

This morning I wondered whether one of the New York columnists or talk radio guys would use the phantom hit-by-pitch thing as a pretext for changing the Derek Jeter narrative from “Captain Perfect” to “Desperate, flawed tragedy” or something like that. It took most of the day for us to get there, but ESPN New…

Heyman’s latest goes over the possible replacements for Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel. This line stuck out at me: People within the Mets organization see ticket sales as a key issue and some opine that Valentine could be the man to re-energize the organization in that regard. It’s fun to mock the Mets from time…

The Marlins and Mariners are set to play an interleague series next year, and Florida is supposed to the home team. But thanks to U2’s tour — man, Bono ruins everything, at least since “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” — Pro Player Robbie Sun Life Stadipark will be occupied. Options: Play in Puerto Rico:…

Former Giants (and Mets and Mariners and Padres and Reds and Indians and Red Sox and Athletics) outfielder Kevin Mitchell has been ordered to stand trial for assaulting a man at a golf course. The claim is that Michell repeatedly punched the guy after he “had spoken disparagingly about him earlier.” “Hey Mitchell! Your refusal…

So much for my brilliant theory. Nyjer Morgan’s suspension has been reduced from fifteen to eight games. You’ll recall that Morgan was appealing two separate suspensions: one for throwing a ball into the Citizens Bank Park stands, for which he was docked seven games, and one for the battle royale he set off against the…